About Me: Steven Erat

About Me, as of September, 2005:

I currently live in Bolton, Massachusetts and work at Adobe as a ColdFusion Quality Assurance Engineer Flex SDK QA Engineer, but also work with JRun, ColdFusion, and Breeze Connect. When not working with web applications some of my favorite activities include outdoor adventures, hiking and backpacking, photography, graphic design, and reading about Science and Technology.

If you'd prefer a short bio, click here.

Life in Maryland
Born in Baltimore, Maryland, near the Chesapeake Bay and its many tributaries, I had a very strong science curriculum during high school and my initial career focus was Marine Biology. During high school in the 80's, I was a volunteer tour guide at the National Aquarium in Baltimore, and I spent time in the summers studying at the Wallops Island Marine Science Consortium near Chincoteague, Virginia. One summer I volunteered as a crew member on the 73' pungy schooner "Lady Maryland" to teach Maryland school children about the Chesapeake Bay. In 1989 I worked a full season on the commercial crabbing boat called the Miss Ann near Crisfield, Maryland where we left the docks for the Pokomoke Sound every day at 4am and wrapped up 12 hours later after pulling 700 pots and hauling 20 to 80 bushels of Maryland blue crabs.

Back in Baltimore, while I pursued my undergraduate degree in Biology at Towson State University, I began working for the National Institute of Health at the NIA campus in Baltimore as a Laboratory Animal Technician. As my education and work experience continued, I shifted my focus towards cellular biology and began working part time as a Neuroscience Lab Technician at the NIA where we studied mechanisms of aging in the brain, especially the degradation of the Basal Ganglia which can lead to Parkinson's Disease.

The Road to Neuroscience, From Boston to Denver
Later, I moved to Boston in 1994 to work for the Laboratory of Neuroscience at the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center to continue in the same area of research for next three years. During that time I worked a second job on nights and weekends as a Large Animal Veterinary Technician for Tufts Vet School, where I staffed the emergency room for horses. I also took many courses in the Biology curriculum at the Harvard Extension School. In 1995 I presented a poster on G Protiens at the Society for Neuroscience annual conference in San Diego, and began accumulating authorship on research papers. Later, In 1997 I was accepted to a Ph.D. program in Neuroscience at the University of Colorado in Denver. Although I was the only one accepted to start early by conducting a summer research project, I was also the only one to leave the program after the first semester of five classes and a lab rotation. Although I tried to find work in the biological sciences and remain in Denver, opportunities were very limited and I returned to Massachusetts where Biotech was hot. While considering employment opportunities while in Denver, I had completed an application to work as a biological observer in the Bering Sea on various commercial vessels from the Alaskan fleet out of Dutch Harbor in the Aleutian Islands. My future could have beeen very different.

Return Ticket
That next year, in 1998, I lived in Gloucester, Massachusetts because I wanted to live near the ocean again, right up against it. It was that year that the book titled The Perfect Storm, set in Gloucester, became popular, and I read it voraciously while listening to the foghorn in the distance from Eastern Point lighthouse. While working at Brandeis University Neuroscience Dept as neuronal cell culturist I also took an interest in maintaining the lab's 25 Macintosh 7.x, 8.x, and 9.x computers that were constantly freezing and crashing, as well as building the lab's official website. Our Brandeis lab shared two Linux enthusiasts, Mark van Rossum and Ken Sugino, and they generously provided many small lessons to help me understand the operating system. With Ken I attended a local wholesale computer show where I bought my first PC component by component, and on which I performed my first Linux installation of Red Hat 5 with the help of Ken's meticulous attention to detail.

Meet ColdFusion
In 1999 I moved to Lexington to be closer to work and lived with several roommates including one who worked in Tech Support for Sybase. At night and on most weekends, I was preoccupied with learning JavaScript and CSS, image editing with Adobe Photoshop, and with learning to build web sites. My roommate Dave began working in Technical Support for Allaire Corporation in Cambridge, along with many other Sybase expatriates, with a cool and easy to learn piece of software called ColdFusion that could generate information dynamically rather than statically as plain HTML. Dave and I spent many occasions discussing web technologies while sharing the kitchen in the evenings.

TalkingTree
It was there in the kitchen that we came up with a list of possible domain names while I was considering starting my own website design business. That's where the name Talking Tree emerged, a name which references a large almond tree on the island of San Salvador where I visited in 1990 for a Marine Biology workshop. The tree was in the town of Cockburn and surrounded by circle of wooden benches to offer the people a place to sit in the shade, enjoy each other's company, and share information. For this reason, it was called the Talking Tree, and I felt that the name would lend itself well to a personal website that would reflect my background in Biology and blend with my growing interest in computer technology, as well as provide a social context to share photographs with distant friends and everyone else on the internet.

Career Change from Biology to Web Technology
The Internet bubble was at its peak in 2000 when my roommate suggested that I come work for Allaire. This was a time where the Internet frenzy was out of control and companies were going as far as training the homeless to be web developers. On my last day of work at Brandeis, I waited for a very long time to intercept a great looking graduate student in the hallway and managed to find enough courage to ask her out. She is now my wife.

Technical Support
In contrast to the confined office space I have now, when I started working for Allaire the whole support department shared an open work area where we could all shout across to each other. I began learning and supporting ColdFusion with a cohort of others hired in the same period, many of whom remain here today. I've been fortunate that I have a passion for working with computer technologies and problem solving, and for many years work seemed more like play to me. Because I enjoyed learning ColdFusion and associated computer technology so much, I often worked 75+ hour weeks and sometimes spent the night at my desk. That nexus of personal and professional interest allowed me to establish myself to the Internet community and my colleagues as a ColdFusion subject matter expert, and I enjoy helping people everywhere learn how to use ColdFusion and troubleshoot problems that arise along the way. Although I was enthusiastic and generally trained in some computer technologies when I started with Allaire, I realize that in today's economy I would never be hired with the same set of limited skills since, especially since the the collapse of the internet bubble has provided the industry with bitter lessons in humility and frugality.

8 seconds
With my hand tightly on the rope and my spurs dug in, I somehow survived the limping economy since 2000 when many of those around me had been bucked off. Macromedia's acquisition of Allaire in 2001 happened just when things started to look gloomy, but Macromedia pulled it off and continued to make tough but wise business decisions during these last few years. I've enjoyed learning the broad range of software products including Flash and Flex, and with the emergence of Java-based ColdFusion MX I've enjoyed learning more and more about Java technologies.

Towards the Future
2005 has been a year filled with many positive changes for me. This summer I was married to my beautiful wife Mercedes with her family in the Spanish Pyrenees, and we hope to have a house and begin a family soon. Her blog is called Casa Arbañil, the name of the house where her father was born in the town of Eresue. Personally, I've taken steps to turn my interest in photography into a profitable endeavor rather than an expensive hobby, and in the near future I look forward to offering large format art photographs for sale. Professionally, I'm very excited to become a part of Adobe Systems, which recently closed an acquisition of Macromedia and is ranked in 2005 by Fortune Magazine at the thirteenth best company to work for in the USA.

- Steven Erat
September, 2005